Paintball Journal

Though paintball is extremely team-oriented, there’s also a great deal on personal skill. It’s finally dawned on me that simply scrimmaging while at the field isn’t going to make you better. To get better you have to drill. I’ve only learned of certain drills over the past few months, but we never run them. When we get to the field we just want to play, right? Who wants to shoot at cardboard boxes, or small pipes? I never really wanted to, but the more I learn about pro teams the more I’m willing to actually run them. All pro teams run drills. They drill, and drill, and drill some more, and then maybe towards the end of a practice they will get a few games in. Two of the most important aspects of drilling is snap shooting and laning.

This is usually done best with another person to help simulate real situations. The 1V1 snap drill is perfect for this. What’s important is to really focus on form and repetition. Every single snap should be just like the one before it. You should come out the exact distance every time, and holding your gun the exact same way. By a simple process of repetition you will find yourself snapping out and hitting your target without thinking once about it, and that’s the way competitive paintball is played; any hesitation gets you killed.

At some point in your paintball career you will find yourself laning of the break. This is one place where gun speed does come into effect (more paint means less chance they run through it), but only if it’s done right. It’s all too easy for inexperienced players to shoot too high or even too low, but laning drills can put your stream of paint right on the spot every time.
First, start with your barrel on whatever it is your breaking from as if it were a real game. Somebody should count down three two one, and then you turn and fire downfield at a box/post that’s just to the inside of one of the back bunkers or even the snake. The goal is to hit the target as fast as possible, and keep the stream on target. If you’re not hitting it right off the break then you need to keep working at it until you can spin around and do it within a half second.

Mix things up as well. Change starting positions, target locations, and even laning while moving to a bunker (running and gunning). Then you can make things more complex by slowly adding to the drill. Start of laning, run and gun to the first bunker while shooting a different target, snap and shoot a third target, then make a second bump, etc. The combinations are limitless.

It might not seem like fun, or a waste of paint, but it’s the only way to go. Serious players should run drills every time they’re at the field to warm up, and save the real games for later. And take it serious; only perfect practice makes perfect. Focus. Concentrate.

Game starts in THREE, TWO, ONE, TEN SECONDS!

It seems like an eternity, but eventually those ten seconds do pass and the buzzer sounds. Front players put their heads down and hands up and dash for their bunkers, mid players go guns up and move to theirs, and the back players…

The back players make some of the most important moves of the game right here.

They lane. And if they’re good, they kill two, maybe three players in the first five seconds of the game.

It’s not easy to get good at this, but here’s a drill I picked up a couple of weeks ago that will help immensely. It’s a pretty slow paint drill too.

First, you need to set up some sort of target, preferably something thin and tall. Place it right in the middle of the lane, close to the destination bunker, but not so close that you’d be hitting the bunker very often with your stream of paint.

Now go back to the opposite starting box. You want to kneel in a position that allows you maximum cover from opposing laners, but that also gives you enough space to lane your intended target. Remember, you also have to be able to spin your upper body from pointing the gun towards the box to pointing towards the target as fast a possible.

The best way is to move completely from the waist. This gives the most stability and fluidity to your motion.

Once you’ve set up (it’s also good to use a ’spotter’ at the other box who can tell you how much of you he can see), try just the snapping motions a couple of times, from the starting box to the target. Then try two-balling the target. Shoot two balls quickly, then return to the starting position. Continue until you can hit the target within two balls consistently. Don’t worry if you can’t immediately. This skill takes a ton of practice to do well.

The logical step after two-balling is one-balling. One-balling is exponentially harder than two balling because it requires that you know your gun’s range and dropoff perfectly, and gives you no chance to adjust after a shot. This takes much longer to do consistently. However, once you are able to do it, the payoff is huge. I’ve seen games where more than half the team was shot off the break and the rest was picked off seconds afterwards. Never underestimate the power of a good back player’s laning and break shooting.

Everybody who knows basketball knows the game HORSE. Each player will take turns shooting the ball, and when a player makes it the following player must match the exact same shot or take a letter. The first person to spell HORSE loses. Well, why not do this with paintball?
Set up multiple targets in an area; maybe a field or backyard. They can very in size, distance, and height to add realistic perspective. Then, find a position where you can see all of the targets, and begin. Now there are two ways I can see this going about.

1. A player will take the lead, and pick any target to shoot at. He will shoot at it until he hits it, counting how many shots it took. Then the second player will step up to the same position, and take the same stance. If the second player hits the same target in fewer shots than his opponent, then his opponent takes a letter. If he matches the same number then the game continues without either player taking a letter. And if the second player fails to hit his target in the amount of shots, then he takes a letter.

You can also play with as many players you want. Each player would then have to hit the target, just like the second player.

OR

2. The second version is simpler. Each player will alternate shots until one hits a target. Then the following player must match that shot. If he doesn’t, then he takes a letter. Then the game goes on, and the process is repeated until somebody loses.

This is a fun drill that you can do just about anywhere, and it conserves a lot of paint while helping you learn a gun. I plan on trying it out the next time we make it to the field.

Learning to walk comes in all different ways for people. Some people are simply naturals. Others, like me, might not be able to walk a trigger to save their life. I’ve seen girls at school show me up! I have improved over the last few months, don’t get me wrong, but I can still get a lot faster.

My stock Ion trigger isn’t exactly the easiest thing to walk, and I think most will agree with me there. I tend to walk it with the very tips of my fingers. I’ve tried further down towards the joint, but I just can’t get the strength to keep it going. I can’t wait till I get a better gun someday, because I know I can walk the regular triggers like the one on my busted B2K4. Now that’s a sweet trigger.

The only way you’re going to get better at it is to practice practice practice! Watch TV with it in your lap, carry it around the house, and take the time to find what part of the finger works best for you. But be warned, parents and siblings can get really annoyed by that “damn clicking”. I don’t know about you all, but that’s like music to my ears when I get it going.

Here’s a fun little thing to try out. I have a fairly light mouse button, so it works pretty decent for me. I’ve been able to walk it up to 18 BPS, but I think only once. I’m not even sure that it’s accurate. And for ramp, walk it while holding down the space bar.

This is a fairly amusing reloading drill. If you find that your reload times aren’t what they ought to be, this drill just might help.

Firstly, this is pretty much in the style of an old Western draw. Stand the two players back to back, and then step away because things are about to get hostile. Make sure both players have completely empty hoppers.

You, as the official adjudicator, will count off paces, something like fifteen or so, depending on how panicked you want your guys to be when reloading. The fewer paces, the more stress they’re put under, and the faster their reload times will get.

After the end step, the players turn, and reload, and shoot as fast as possible. First one to get hit loses. Oh, and no ramping, because that could get ugly at five paces.

One of the most fantastic drills I’ve seen in a while is this hilarious drill. You blindfold two players, and have each player set their marker to semi. We had some trouble with this when one of the guys’ Egos started running away on him. Oh, also, that was kind of a weird way to put those instructions, you probably want them messing with their board without a blindfold on.

Regardless, you then have a player for each blind man be their guide. They can only touch their blind guy to get them to a bunker, but other than that they must use only their voice to tell them when to shoot, where to shoot, how to move, etc.

This drill is great for listening, and can give a player a much better feel for how exactly their gun and body should feel while playing. Plus it makes for some great pictures.

Laning is one of the most important things that you have to do off the break, and at certain points in the game. A player shoud be skilled at both holding and lane, and avoiding a lane.

This drill should test both aspects, depending on the role you play in it.

To start, you need three players.

Player A will be the one shooting lanes.

Players B and C will be running and gunning to their own bunkers.

You start all players at their break points, essentially, it’s a quick 2v1 match, except with different objectives. Have players B and C running through different lanes, at different times, but let player A know which lanes he needs to shoot, because you are supposed to assign lanes in a game.

Anyways, long story short, game starts, Players B and C book towards their bunkers and go in low and fast, hopefully avoiding any stream of paint that Player A has managed to send their way.

Rinse, dry, and switch players out.

This is a good run-through drill that is pretty easily set up on any speedball field.

Firstly, you need a straight lane to run through. On both sides of the lane, there should be bunkers to the left and right spaced roughly 5-10 ft. apart. Behind these, set up paint boxes, buckets, whatever is handy at the time. The objective is to run through these, switching hands as you go, shooting the objects set up behind the bunkers, as fast as you can.

Make sure to emphasize that the object is to make the kill, not complete the run through as fast as possible. This would be more realistic, because in a game, you don’t keep running if you missed on your run-through.

This is a great way to enhance speed, accuracy, and ambidexterity.

To support Dana’s snapping post, here is an easy, paint-friendly drill.

Both players will start at the break. A third person can call the game to start, and both players will sprint (like they would in a real game) to their designated bunkers. These shouldn’t be too far apart. There should be no shooting until the players are in their bunkers. This will get the adrenaline going, and hopefully create a better simulation of a real game.

The rules are simple. After the players have reached their bunkers, they are allowed to start shooting, but only one ball per snap. They must come out and shoot once, and then go back inside before coming back out to shoot another time. The object of the game is to learn accuracy, not volume. Posting is perfectly legal.

After a person is hit, have another player from your team run in and take his spot. The winner will stay. This is a great drill to improve personal gun fighting skills while using a minimal amount of paint.